Dragonfly by Rebecca Yoxall

Liven up your drawings with a splash of Brusho.

I love to draw. I love to draw anything! But I am particularly inspired by nature as you probably know by now if you have followed my posts throughout the year. But it can sometimes be hard to start a drawing, that expanse of white paper just staring at you. A blank piece of paper can be very uninspiring too.

When I draw I like to get elements of fun and quirkiness in there to liven up my paper surface first. This not only provides a bit of inspiration to express my personality BUT also stops that dreaded uninviting white paper syndrome.

A great way of doing this is by adding wacky colours with Brusho!!

Drawing and Brusho can go hand in hand.

I have had great fun creating this dragonfly for the blog today. I hope you like it.

Any good quality drawing paper or smooth (hot pressed) watercolour paper is ideal for me and I usually tape this to a board to stop it moving around. I have sprayed the surface with Brusho shimmer mist spray to get me started.

Then I can start to splodge the Brusho colours. I do this by sprinkling onto dry paper. The image below shows how little Brusho powder you need to achieve lots of colour.

Taking a brush with water I swished through the dry Brusho crystals gently moving them around and forming interesting shapes and outlines.

I concentrated on just one side of the paper so as not to over power the space. This makes for a better composition.

I decided whilst it was still wet to use a hairdryer to speed things up and this also has the effect of blowing the Brusho washes around the paper surface capturing even more lively marks and lines.

Once dry I began to plan out my drawing. It is so much easier to dive right in when there are beautiful shapes and colours already on the paper inviting me to look for shapes that I can use. Sometimes a drawing will be inspired by the shapes that are created and other times you may splodge your colour in a more controlled way to fit an idea of what you will draw.

I decided to use a permanent/waterproof fine liner pen for my drawing and began by shaping in the head of the dragonfly.

I kept my initial drawing lines really sketchy and loose to enhance the feeling of movement and life.

The next few drawings show some of the details as I worked through my dragonfly design.

I built up shading on the left side of the dragonfly to add more depth and darker tone to contrast the bright colours. Absolutely any drawing will work in this way. 

I'm off out this weekend to fill a sketchbook with more wacky colour Brusho drawings.

Have fun

Bec